Science and Nineteenth-Century American Culture: A Note on George H. Daniels' Science in the Age of Jackson

George H. Daniels' new Science in American Society represents a second and admirable pioneering contribution to "the study of science in relation to [American] culture."' Together with his earlier Science in the Age of Jackson2 it may be taken as a highly useful chart of largely virgin terrain. Few leading American historians have displayed an interest in the role of "science in American society," and most of the precocious investigators of American science have not attempted seriously to relate science to its cultural matrix. The fact that Daniels attempts to do this, although in a limited way, indicates the importance of his work. Yet the "cultural" relationships of science in the American past manifest complexities of such an order as to render perilous many of the tasks of judgment and analysis involved in any pioneer work. Having been much edified but not always convinced by Science in the Age of Jackson, I should like to present a brief reconsideration of the "age of Jackson" period there marked out as a critical stage in American scientific development. Since the relevant sections of Science in American Society presuppose the essential validity of a number of key judgments offered in the earlier work, it seems appropriate to commemorate its appearance with a partial reassessment of the foregoing work. Before moving on to the central difficulties of the thesis presented in The Age